I'm attempting to copy some photos from a USB flash "thumb" drive using my five year old Toshiba notebook (1905-S301) on NetBSD 4.0 using the GENERIC LAPTOP kernel. disklabel tells me to use /dev/sd0e, so I mount it with "mount -t msdos /dev/sd0e ~/floppy", then try to copy files with "cp -p ~/floppy/*.JPG .", and I get these messages on the console log:

The last three lines repeat over and over, and a few files get copied (the number of files successfully copied varies), but it never completes. The process hangs; the light on the drive flashes as if it's doing something, then stops, then starts again, but few files get copied to the local directory.

Rooting around on various archives and forums, I found the advice to disable ehci/ohci, so I did that, but it did not change the result. (To do this, at the boot configuration prompt I typed "find usb" and three devices showed up: uhci, ehci, ohci. I typed "disable ehci", then "disable ohci", then "find usb" to confirm they were disabled, and finally "exit" to boot the system.)

It looks to me like you got the procedure right. I've had those errors when I've tried to use a drive on an underpowered USB hub or card. Try hooking in a powered hub and then the thumb drive to the hub and see what happens.